Holiday destinations that were unexpectedly lovely OR awful.

[NickiFury]

Torremolinos - ex booked it and I really didn't want to go. It was beautiful, amazing food, beach, perfect for kids, been back loads since.

Thailand - I hated it from the moment I left Bangkok airport, Krabi down by the coast was ok but the rest of the time was awful, I actually cried with relief when we touched down at Heathrow.

Prague - it had been built up as this magical place and when I got there I just couldn't get past the sinister vibe there. Hard to explain but I just didn't like it there.

Stonehenge- booked a day trip from London despite reading about how many people felt it was a let down. Being a cold, blustery January day it wasn't exactly heaving with crowds and I found it fascinating.

In the UK, I absolutely love Edinburgh and Liverpool. Just so cultured and friendly and compact and so much to see and do, lots of it free.

Not keen on Manchester, Blackpool or Newquay.

Abroad, I love Munich, Madrid and Nice. Also Dubrovnik- great place.

I didn't like Cancun in Mexico, not a fan of manufactured places.
Also hated Kos - just a dump of an island.

Lots of love for Lanzarote on this thread, think I might have to look into it!

Loved Lanzarote far more than I imagined. It was so relaxing and different to other sun and sand resorts I've been to.

Dublin and Edinburgh leave me disappointed. I've been to both a couple of times and never get that good feeling I've felt in other cities.

I want to go to Lanzarote even more after reading this thread. Where is nice to stay; not too quiet and not too noisy, with a teen?
I'm on holiday ten minutes drive from Sidari in Corfu at the moment. Where we are is very quiet and a beautiful temperature. I love the green-ness of Corfu. I think you need a car or to go on boat trips if you visit. It feels almost tropical at times and in the spring it will be covered on flowers.

Australia- did not like at all, in fact when in Sidney I found locals so rude, we left early.

Ibiza- incredibly beautiful island. San Antonio Bay (just outside club district) is very picturesque and quiet, I would totally recommend it to any young family

Disliked surprisingly:

Morocco: Toured for three weeks and spent three weeks arguing with people just to get anything done. The premier hotel in Tangiers didn't have our room ready when we arrived at 10PM and we had to badger them constantly to let us in.

Copenhagen: Overpriced and unfriendly. Food bland!

Vancouver: Hugely pretentious and quite the drug problem. I grew up in Canada and visited it with dp from the UK.

Paris is also very over-rated and we went twice just to check.

Loved surprisingly:

Singapore - thought it'd just be shopping. People were friendly, it was easy to get around and it's very multicultural.

The Azores: This was a 'halfway point' between Toronto and London for meeting an old school friend. Was prepared to be bored shitless on my alone days, brought books and work and didn't touch them. People relaxed and friendly, food amazing, things to do, weather awesome even a week before Christmas!

Berlin: As before. Been three times now. So much history. Old people there must have lived through so much!

Sri Lanka: Only had a two day stopover but lovely genuine people and didn't feel ripped off (even though I likely was). Didn't get the trots!

Florida - here at the moment doing Disney and Universal theme parks. It wasn't my choice of destination but came for the boys. I thought I'd hate it as its everything I dislike, it's bright, loud and brash but I absolutely love it! It is like a strange alternate universe. It's sunny (and very very hot) and everyone is so friendly. Seeing the boys so relaxed and happy and making some amazing family memories before they grow up too much is just such a perfect holiday.

France. I love France and have been lots of times before but the last time we went was awful. We hired a gite with my parents and DB and DSiL. The gite was dirty and tired, the garden over grown with 3 plastic chairs as the promised garden furniture. The pool was tiny and had a strange lid that couldn't be removed and had to be propped open. Instead of being able to walk into the village for breakfast croissants and dinner as we had imagined we (well DH and DDad) had to drive everywhere. Oh and it rained for nearly 2 weeks! We had a good time because the company was fun and we saw some lovely places but it was spoilt by the substandard accommodation and location that was far from accurate to that we had booked.

The town of Celebration, near Orlando. The town was planned and built by Disney, and has very strict rules about what all houses look like.
We rented a villa from friends, and I loved it despite expecting it to be twee and naff.
Absolutely charming, much nicer than most Florida developments.

stately get yourself to Perth and then go south to Tall Trees country. Loads of wonderful walking, and the car distances are manageable, not a big dull desert.

Anyone who thinks Australia has nothing to see needs to get to Tasmania. You don't go there to sit on beaches, shop or get pissed (you can do all that in Europe or indeed in the UK) but to see scenery and animals like nowhere else.

Disappointing: Sicily. I'd ALWAYS wanted to go there and I was so looking forward to it. We stayed in a village outside Palermo and although the villa was lovely, the whole place was a dump. Poverty, graffiti, stray animals, litter everywhere. Even driving out to more remote coastal areas, most of the beaches were privately owned with huge fences, barbed wire and guard dogs. There were huge unfinished villas everywhere that looked like they'd been abandoned for years or even decades, presumably related to money laundering. It didn't really feel safe. On the final day we did drive a bit further round and the scenery there was breathtaking, exactly what I'd imaged Sicily to be. I would go back but I'd do my research first.

Lovely: Wales, Gower Pensinsular. Wasn't really expecting much from a UK camping holiday, but we pitched our tent in Oxwich Bay overlooking the most enormous and picturesque sandy beach and the weather was incredible. Absolutely stunning part of the world. Every day we drove to another beautiful, empty unspoilt beach or scenic location, it was bliss.

Dislike Dublin. Booked a very cheap flight there when we were young and skint thinking it would be more fun than a break in a British city and the absolutely jawdroppingly expense of everything was a horrible shock. Bars with people dressed as leprechauns and fiddlers and hugely overpriced drinks. I did love one restaurant called the Elephant and Castle and also the art gallery was good but large parts of it were just like a boring high street.

Sienna was lovely to look at but nothing to do except sit in bars around the square and wander a bit.

Salzburg and Vienna were just amazing. We went to Salzburg during the festival of their patron saint and the whole city were out in lederhosen and dirndle skirts in the evening with beer stalls and food and music, it was amazing. And the city feels so bright and fresh being up in the mountains. Vienna is stunning and just gleams and seemed very well off without being pretentious. I think I should go to more places in Austria now.

County Cork in Ireland is stunning and the little towns such as Clonakilty are beautiful and friendly. I would never go to Dublin again but would visit 'real' Ireland!

Florence is magical. I just feel happy walking around the streets. Don't go in the summer and pre book things such as the Uffizi and it's not so difficult with crowds. Also pedestrianised in the centre so it's not so hard to walk around (like Rome, amazing, crazy and beautiful but I got to the point where I had to really build myself up to cross the road the traffic is so mental)

I want to go to Lanzarote even more after reading this thread. Where is nice to stay; not too quiet and not too noisy, with a teen? I love the green-ness of Corfu.

Playa Blanca (on the south coast) is where we stayed. Its very dry and a bit dusty, but it has the best sunshine. You can drive anywhere on the island in an hour too, so hire a car and explore that way - the roads are excellent. However, the island is most definitely NOT green. Its a volcanic island and much of the vulcanism has been recent, so expect lots of black lava, craters, etc. There is a stark beauty to it, but if you want 'green' you might prefer one of the other Canary islands.

One other thing that I disliked about Australia. If you don't immediately LOVE it and rave about it then Australians get really unpleasant. I don't expect everyone to love where I'm from - I can both its good and bad points - but criticise anything about Australia at your peril. Nothing short of saying its amazing and you want to emigrate there immediately will do!

Love -
Berlin - all the history and culture.
Castelldefels near Barcelona - it's further along the coast. Was great with children - lovely shallow water at the beach and only half an hour into the city.
Bali - Especially Ubud- the temples, lovely people, beautiful rice terraces - amazing. Wasn't so keen on Seminyak - beach nothing to speak of and got harassed by hawkers a lot.
Dorset - love Durdledoor/Lulworth Cove and fossil hunting in Charmouth. Lyme Regis is only 1.5 hrs from where we live so sometimes go for the day. I was expecting it to be a tacky seaside resort but it's fab.
Aberdovey in West Wales - seems to have its own micro climate. Also an amazing ice cream shop.

Wasn't keen in Gran Canaria - where we stayed was very concrete and full of pissed up tourists (pre children many years ago!).

Marrakesh - probably didn't help that I was pregnant so couldn't go to the baths and wasn't keen on mountain trekking! Went with a friend and we stayed in a Riad instead of a big hotel. No TV and not much to do in the evening once you've eaten. The weather was also unusually cold for the time of year.

I'm Australian and I'm not offended I do think the UK is my spiritual home though. One of the things I hate most here is you can get on an (often expensive) domestic flight, fly for hours and when you get off the plane it's not that different from where you came from!

I really need to get to Tasmania one day.

I'm so glad I started this thread, some great information on here. I really want to go to "Celebration" now. I had no clue it even existed.

Another place I fell in love with was Clearwater on the gulf coast. The beaches there are exactly how beaches should be, white, sandy, full of amazing wild life and no one else around, often for miles. If I could live anywhere I chose it would be there.

Thanks Juneau.
I like green but also like the desert. I know Lanzarote is volcanic; I was just giving a picture of Corfu as someone asked.

I've been to Brussels twice - once in summer and once in winter and both times just had a really nice vibe from it which I wasn't expecting.

Found Gran Canaria a bit "meh". The weather is fantastic for a winter break but it's very arid looking (unsurprisingly).

Also, not really a holiday, but I've never taken to the Peak District. I've been for a few days out there as we only live up in the M1 in Yorkshire. I don't know why but I just find it a bit depressing and I'm used to windswept moors!

Wheatchief - it's true what you say about how you gather friends that reflect what you like. In my earlier comment I didn't mean to say that everyone in Australia is anti-intellectual, far from it. I know many wonderful, switched on Aussies, and I do wonder what my life would be like now if I stayed, if I would have found my people, like I found my people in here. My comment was more about the mainstream culture, the media, the god awful opinions that get spread around and accepted as truths to be apathetically lived with and unchallenged. Oh man, the news over there, I though UK news had it's problems but at least it wears it's biases openly.

I think the Australian identity carries a lot of internalised guilt and unhealed wounds from our very recent history. Modern Australia has such a short history and a brutal one at that. I almost think of it as a young adult with a violent upbringing who carries itself with a confident swagger, will deny any problem, probably get into a fist fight with you if you mention it's past. To grow into it's full potential it has to honestly face it's past traumas and heal from them through truth, reflection and forgiveness. Might take a while.

It is a beautiful, varied country. I'd love to make it to Tasmania, and Arnhem land one day too.

I'm really interested to hear other posters' POV on Australia. I found Sydney to be great - interesting, safe and vibrant. However, I disliked WA: racism and sexism seemed rife.

I wasn't overwhelmed by Venice - yes, it is an interesting and unusual city, but too touristy. I still went back, though, so I clearly wasn't TOO put off it!

I think some of the posters who say Dublin is awful are talking about temple bar. You'd be hard pushed to find an Irish person there

Australia - distinctly underwhelmed. Sydney was meh. Melbourne was dreary.

Barcelona - Saw two violent muggings on our first night. Lots of sleazy men. Over priced food. You'd have to pay me to go back (although Sitges was lovely).

The Algarve and Majorca - both package holidays to touristy resorts. Not my thing at all. Amazing beaches, friendly locals, food in Portugal was fab.